Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 8865658" data-attributes="member: 6906155">I wrote an essay on that a good many years ago - the Hobbit as a retelling of the third part of Beowulf, and the Kipling story Riki Tiki Tavi being the first and second part.[SPOILER="Original text"]<h3>Why THE HOBBIT is a sequel to a story about a mongoose</h3>The other day I was studying a comprehension with one of my students based on an extract from Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a story from The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. This was one of my favourite stories as a child, but looking at it as an adult, I realised that it was a retelling of the Anglo Saxon saga Beowulf. Strangely, this presented me with a problem: having made the connection, was there any way in which I could make use of this insight? All I could think of was to write about it, in the hope that someone finds it entertaining.The first question is, did Kipling intend this, or was it just a coincidence? Well, both stories take the form of the Monomyth, the most common pattern in any narrative. However, several details seem too close for simple coincidence. In both stories, the hero arrives in a location plagued by a male monster, which he defeats in battle. This results in a more terrible female monster swearing vengeance against the hero and his friends. The hero then hunts down and defeats the female monster in her subterranean lair.If you look into Kipling’s educational background, it seems likely that Beowulf would have been a story he studied at school. So, if we assume that the retelling was intentional, do any of Kipling’s other stories retell traditional tales? Well, the story of Mowgli, also from the Jungle Book, resembles the story of Romulus and Remus. However, whilst the Just So Stories take the form of traditional myths, so far as I can discover, they are entirely of Kipling’s own invention. The novel I studied for my O level English, Kim, certainly takes the form of the Monomyth, but otherwise appears to be original (and is itself an inspiration for many other writers). My knowledge of Kipling tails off after this point.Anyway, my next step was to search the internet to see what other people have had to say about the subject. And yes, a couple of other sources make the connection between the story of a heroic mongoose and the story of a heroic Geat. However, there seems to be very little critical analysis of Kipling’s work. Is he still so strongly associated with the British Empire that writing about his work is not politically correct? My search of the internet did turn up one extremely valuable clue though. Apparently, Kipling wrote a letter in 1895, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/29/rudyard-kipling-admitted-plagiarism-jungle-book" target="_blank">published earlier this year</a>, where he admits that, in writing the Jungle Book, “it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.” Well, I think I can jog Mr Kipling’s memory there!So, what is the connection to The Hobbit? Beowulf actually faces three monsters, but only the first two are paralleled in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The final monster, who Beowulf encounters in later life, is a dragon. J. R. R. Tolkien was an expert on Beowulf, and he incorporated elements from the third part of the tale into The Hobbit.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

Verification